I am tired of spinning beachballs

[Mark Swanson]

Since I upgraded to 10.2.4 I see way to much of spinning beachballs and 
bouncing dock items.  Sometimes the first application boots quickly, 
but any subsequent application bounces for literally minutes.  My Mail 
application invariably gives me a spinning beachball  and after a 
considerable wait, tells me it can't locate the spelling checker and, 
of course, fails to input the last half of the sentence I was typing.  
What did I do wrong.  Everything was snappy before.  Now it acts like 
its working on something much more important than what I want to do.  
Ran disk utility (and fixed permissions) and Drive 10.  No problems.  
Is there something I need to do.  Also, I waited a couple of weeks to 
mention this thinking that maybe things would correct themselves, or it 
would finish doing what was dominating its time.  Do I need to cast 
some "terminal" spells?